A wire stripper having at least two resiliently flexible blades each of which terminate in an insulator stripper disposed in opposed relation operably responsive to a slidly engaged insulated wire to release the insulator from the wire.
Electrician's must be able to draw a numerous and wide variety of insulated wires to address the construction specifications of a given construction project. Each type of insulated wire may be wound onto spools from which lengths are cut to the construction specification. The insulator at the ends of the cut lengths of insulated wire must be released to expose the wire(s) within so that electrically conductive connections can be established between lengths of insulated wire drawn at the construction project.
Even though there is a large commercial market for wire stripper devices to assist users in releasing the insulator from insulated wire, there remain a number of significant unresolved problems with the conventional wire stripper devices available to release the insulator from the numerous and varied types of insulated wire.
A significant problem with conventional wire stripper devices can be that the wire stripper components which engage the insulated wire must be operated by hand. One aspect of this problem can be that the user has only one hand free to manipulate insulated wires which require stripping. The use of a single hand to repeatedly manipulate a large number of insulated wires to release the insulator may place an excess amount of stress on connective tissue or the joints of the delegated hand and arm of the user and under some circumstances may result in repetitive stress injury. Another aspect of this problem can be that the user must manually open and close the component parts of conventional wire stripper devices and then release the insulator from the insulated wire which can be time consuming. Another aspect of this problem can be that the insulator on certain types of insulated wire may require application of a greater amount of force to release than can be practically applied utilizing certain conventional hand held devices.
Another problem with conventional wire stripper devices may be that the wire stripper components which engage the insulator of the insulated wire are exposed during operation and can be a source of possible injury to the user. One aspect of this problem can be that conventional stripper components when used can be opened to expose a space between the cutter surfaces which can be substantially larger than the diameter of the insulated wire being stripped of the insulator. For example, the exposed space between the cutter surfaces can be sufficiently large for insertion of a portion of a hand or finger. Another aspect of this problem can be that the exposed stripper components can be susceptible to damage either during use or during storage.
Another problem with conventional wire stripper devices may be that the location of conventional stripper components relative to the user during operation may limited. Hand held wire strippers for example do not allow the stripper components to be variably located for operation outside of the hand of the user at all and when conventional wire stripper devices are operated in the hand of a user the location of the wire stripper is limited to the range afforded by the anatomy of the user.
The wire stripper invention described herein addresses each of these problems associated with conventional wire stripper devices.